Winter in Yellowstone National Park can be a rewarding challenge for photographers, here shooting Castle Geyser.

This bison takes the road more traveled to cut down on the strength- sapping work required to plow through fresh snow on the way to a new grazing area in Yellowstone National Park.

The thousands of residents of the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, Wyo., don't seem to mind the sleighs; they play, fight and otherwise go about the business of being elk.

Ice and snow combined with freezing temperatures and the heat from thermal springs makes for dramatic scenes like this one on the trail to Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park. February 2008. Kyle Wagner, The Denver Post

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Bundled in so much winter apparel that only the eyes, nose and mouth were visible, what appeared to be a woman stood motionless in the center of the snowpacked path, making it impossible to pass. But there was an anticipation in her stillness that made me stop a few feet behind.

She flashed a conspiratorial smile. I was just about to ask what was going on — we were still slightly less than a mile from the lodge on the Old Faithful Geyser Trail, dark was fast approaching, and a heel blister was redefining agony — but just then a cow elk lumbered out of the woods from the left and across the path in front of us.

We both scrambled backward a bit, mindful of the 25-yard distance required between us and wildlife. The elk fixed us with a look for a few seconds, then slowly snuffled her face through the snow in search of food on the other side of the path before heading back into the woods.

“She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” the woman said as we began down the path again, she on snowshoes, I on cross- country skis. She introduced herself as Sarah Withee from Manitou Springs, and she was visiting Yellowstone National Park with a group of 15 friends, the majority of them from Colorado, most of them finishing up a day of sight-seeing elsewhere in the park. “I can’t believe how few people I’ve seen today,” Withee said. “It’s been so quiet and peaceful.”

In fact, we were the first people either had seen for some time, having both just spent several hours exploring the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. I also had skied the 5 miles of the Biscuit Basin Loop Trail, after a rewarding morning trip to Lone Star Geyser, and since 9 a.m. had run into fewer than three dozen humans.

Ungulates, however, were another matter. In the hoofed- animal category alone, my count this day was 34 bison and 12 elk, many of whom were hanging around Old Faithful or grazing near the trail around the basin. I also spied six coyotes briskly stalking unseen creatures around the fringes of Biscuit Basin, and in the time it takes for a person to hold her breath, nearly drop a camera and click off one very far-away image, a gray wolf — actually more cream-colored with charcoal highlights — ambled across an open, snowy patch as I stood transfixed at Chromatic Spring.

And even though the count on wild animals I had seen by the third day of my trip reached the hundreds — easily outnumbering the humans I had been forced to deal with on this winter foray to America’s first national park, established in 1872 — the experience never failed to move me.

Truth be told, I was starting to panic about the thought of reacclimating to civilization. Why couldn’t I just stay here with the bison?

Mostly unplugged

There are no televisions in the rooms at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge; there is no Internet, and no WiFi in the lobby. There are telephones, but you get the sense that it was a grudging concession to progress — they have them in the sparsely decorated but comfortable rooms at the Snow Lodge, but not in the more austere cabins.

The Snow Lodge was built in 1998 to replace a series of buildings that had begun with the Campers Cabins lodge built in the late 1920s. The building that came before the Snow Lodge simply became too small to accommodate the growing popularity of Yellowstone in winter. And while it doesn’t have the grand old feel of the 1904 Old Faithful Inn, it’s cozy and rustic, and the lobby fireplace — with its long row of rocking chairs, free cookies and coffee or hot chocolate — is a nice place to relax at the end of a day of winter activities.

And there are plenty of those from which to choose, starting at about mid-December, when all of the overnight accommodations except for the Snow Lodge near Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel near the North Entrance close down. At the same time, all park roads are restricted to over-snow vehicles, primarily snowcoach — which look like snowmobiles on steroids and can hold up to 20 people — or snowmobiles, which must be the quieter, park-approved machines.

The road to Mammoth is drivable by car from the North Entrance, which requires a flight into Bozeman or Billings, Mont., but reasonable airfares from Colorado make flying into Jackson and getting to the Old Faithful area via Flagg Ranch more desirable. Not to mention that the Upper, Midway and Lower Geyser Basins give new meaning to “winter wonderland.”

If you’ve been to Yellowstone only in the crowd- choked, foliage-framed high season, winter Yellowstone will strike you as a merciless but magnificent landscape; it’s easy to get turned around because normally recognizable features are often covered in curvaceous sculptures of untouched snow. Geysers can be more quickly pinpointed because even their earliest earthy breaths of steam can be seen from far away in the breathtakingly cold air; thermal pools with their blue and green water and rainbow-colored bacteria are all the more dramatic surrounded by blankets of white.

Keep your eyes open for big growths of needle ice, the shards of frozen water pushing out of the soil, and be sure to get a closer look around the pools — remembering that some of these features can have temperatures of 180 degrees or more, and serious burns and even death can result from contact. Binoculars come in handy; you’ll be surprised at the amount of life to be found in these seemingly inhabitable areas.

Skiers’ haven

“There’s one right there,” said John Wallingford, our guide on a Firehole Basin snowcoach tour. All seven of us leaned down to try to see what turned out to be a bug so small several in the group never did catch it. You have to be patient: The insect survives by jumping up and down on the water, never spending more than a second in the freezing air, or it would die.

Most of the people on the tour turned out to be Withee’s friends, a group led by Manitou Springs couple Karen and Gary Michels, who have been bringing their buddies to Yellowstone every other winter since the mid-’90s. Their favorite activity was cross-country skiing, and they had been all over the park on guided and unguided adventures.

“The thing is, you can be a beginner or an expert here,” said Polly Parent of Colorado Springs. “We have people in the group of all levels, and some of them are actually elderly, and we have found trails for everyone to do. There are groomed trails, trails where you have to work hard, but there are so many rewards: the geysers and the wildlife and the scenery. There isn’t always this much to see in other places.”

The Firehole Basin Tour was an easy walking one that explored the dramatic valley around the Firehole River, with its burbling paint pots and hissing fumaroles (steam vents). We spent quite a bit of time backing away from bison, who like the thermal pools and geyser areas not because they are warmer for their bodies but because they heat the ground to make foraging for food less work. “Winter kills more than anything else in the park,” Wallingford said. “It’s so hard for the animals to find food, and they have to be strong and healthy going into winter, or they won’t survive. It’s harsh, but it does keep everything in balance here.”

Wallingford, who has been working at Yellowstone since he moved here from San Diego in 2004, turned out to be quite an expert on the science of Yellowstone. “You get a lot of time to read and study things here,” he said. “It’s not like there’s a town to go to at night to hang out in clubs or catch a movie.”

It does take a certain kind of person to enjoy working at Yellowstone in winter — the staff of approximately 800 at Old Faithful alone dwindles down to around 160 for the colder months, which means fewer people to share the workload, but also fewer people to hang out with. Staff members say they cherish such park-sponsored events for them as the annual Valentine’s Day dance as ways to blow off steam and bond with one another.

“It can be kind of isolating, and there’s no escaping each other, for the most part,” said Lisa Culpepper, a snowcoach driver from Dayton, Ohio, who has spent six winters and eight summers at Yellowstone. “But for those of us who love it here, we say we endure the summers to be able to enjoy the winters.”

It helps that many of them are fascinated by the science, the scenery and the sports involved in winter; Culpepper works a second job as a professional photographer, Wallingford studies biology, and my cross country ski guide, Crystal Cassidy, enters skate ski competitions.

“The really cool thing is that most of the people who visit Yellowstone in the winter are like-minded,” Cassidy said as we sat on the snowy ground near Lone Star Geyser, the sun warm enough to keep us comfortable for the two-hour wait for the next display. “You don’t come here when it’s freezing cold and covered in snow unless you get it. And then you meet a bunch of other people who feel the same way, and that just makes for a really nice scene here.”

What sounded like a group of old friends chatting over prime rib in the Obsidian Dining Room one night at the Snow Lodge turned out to be travelers with Elderhostel who had just met that day in West Yellowstone. “We hit it off and decided to have dinner together tonight,” said Arline Aalfs of Brevard, N.C.

Next to Arline sat her husband, Dennis Aalfs, and rounding out the table were Kay and Leon Dickson of Lafayette, Ind., and Julia Bounds of Decatur, Ala. Bounds had been to Yellowstone only once before, in the summer of 1949, just after she had obtained her master’s of science degree in ecology from the University of Montana.

“I always vowed to return in the winter one day. It only took me 59 years, but here I am,” she said, laughing. “It’s even better than I expected, and I thought it would be pretty spectacular.”

Insider’s Guide

GET THERE: There are fewer options in winter for getting into Yellowstone National Park. From Denver International Airport (DEN), you can fly direct into Jackson Hole Airport (JAC) in Wyoming on American, Delta, Frontier, Northwest and United, or into Gallatin Field Airport (BZN) in Bozeman, Mont., or Billings Logan International Airport (BIL) in Billings, Mont., on any of the major airlines. Winter airfares start at $220 round-trip.

You can drive your own vehicle from the North Entrance to Cooke City, Mont., and on the tiny portion of U.S. 191 on the park’s west side, but the rest of the park’s roads are restricted to snowmobile or snowcoach from November to March. That means you can get to Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel from Bozeman or Billings on your own (89 miles, but take snowy roads into account when figuring times), but from Jackson, it’s a 57-mile drive to Flagg Ranch, and then it’s a snowcoach or snowmobile for the ride to Old Faithful Snow Lodge (another 39 miles, which can take up to 3 hours, depending on stops to check out bison or geyser basins along the way).

You also can stay in West Yellowstone, Mont., and join a tour into the park. Or you can drive the 523 miles from Denver to Flagg Ranch, which, depending on conditions, can take 10-12 hours.

GET IN: Go ahead and splurge — this land is your land. For $80, you can get an America the Beautiful Pass, good for one year’s entry into any federal fee area in the country. Otherwise, it’s $25 for a seven-day pass per vehicle for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park ($10 age 62 and older).

GET AROUND: All of the major rental car companies operate out of the Boze- man and Billings airports; four-wheel- drive is best, but you’ll pay.

STAY AND DINE: Yellowstone lodgings are closed until May 2, when Old Faithful Snow Lodge and Mammoth Springs Hotel are the first to open, followed by the rest within a month. Both lodges are taking reservations for the 2008-09 winter season; the Snow Lodge schedule is Dec. 17-March 15, 2009, while Mammoth will be open Dec. 19-March 8, 2009. Rates have not been approved by the National Park Service. Check online for packages that include lodging, snowcoach shuttles, breakfast and hot tubs or ice skating at Mammoth, or equipment rentals at either place. Call 866-439-7375, 307-344-7311 or visit travelyellowstone.com for more info.

Old Faithful Snow Lodge sits close enough to Old Faithful Geyser to walk to it and the surrounding trails. There is a cross country ski and snowshoe rental shop, a gift shop and two restaurants, although only the more upscale Obsidian Dining Room is open for winter operation (reservations for dinner are essential). It does an excellent job of serving standards such as prime rib and shrimp cocktail, as well as trendier items and decent breakfasts. The Western-themed rooms in the lodge (think moose prints on the linens and lots of pine furniture) are comfortably sized and sport large windows to catch the views of the surrounding lodgepole pine forests, while the cabins, although showing their age a bit, are quiet and set far enough away from the lodge to feel pleasantly isolated. Western cabins are roomy with full bathrooms, while the Frontier duplex models are smaller, showers only. Proposed 2008-09 rates: Lodge room $191; Western cabin $140; Frontier cabin $94.

Mammoth Springs Hotel has ice skating and hot tubs to add to its cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and other winter options. The Mammoth Hotel Dining Room offers terrific views from its large windows and a nicely balanced menu of game meats and fish with a Mediterranean bent. As at the Snow Lodge, there are no TVs or Internet services. Room options include “mid-range,” which means simple rooms with shower or tub, and rooms without private bath; guests share bathrooms with private showers at the end of the hallway, although the rooms do have sinks and a mirror. There also are two suites, each with a private bedroom with two queen beds and a sitting room with cable TV. Proposed 2008-09 rates: suite $427; mid-range room $115; no-bath room $85.

PLAY

WILDLIFE: The wildlife viewing in winter is unparalleled: bison, elk, bighorn sheep and coyote can be found in surprising places, often moving along the roads and in big groups on the trails near Old Faithful and the other geyser basins. Wolves are rare close to the lodges but not unheard of; you’re more likely to see them, though, on a guided tour. Moose can be found on the drive from Jackson to Flagg Ranch. Ravens are everywhere and fascinating to observe. Talk to the guides and snowcoach drivers about where to look; they are incredibly knowledgeable about the park.

Keep in mind that the animals are fighting for their lives from November to March, and the rangers have a zero-tolerance policy for visitors who break the rule of maintaining a 25-yard distance — as well they should. A stressed-out animal is likelier to die when unable to find food, which is tough enough in the snow. If you have to take up-close photos of the animals, use a long lens.

National Elk Refuge, U.S. 26-89-191, Jackson, 307-733-9212. Get up close to thousands of elk (often with a few coyote lurking around the fringes, and sometimes bison), viewed from a horse-drawn sleigh pulled into the middle of the herd, with a view of the Sleeping Indian mountain behind. There will be much discussion of points and weight and buck size among the hunters in the group, but there is nothing to compare with watching young elk spar and play mere yards away. Dress very, very warmly. Sleigh rides operate mid-December through March, conditions permitting. Rates: $16 adults, $12 ages 5-12, under 5 free. Purchase tickets (first come, first served) at the Jackson Hole & Greater Yellowstone Visitor Center, 532 N. Cache Drive. More info: fws.gov/nationalelkrefuge.

DOGSLEDDING: Jackson Hole Iditarod Sled Dog Tours, 800-554-7388, jhsleddog .com. Veteran Iditarod musher Frank Teasley runs half- and full-day trips, with the latter including lunch and a soak in Granite Hot Springs. You can drive the dogs with a guide alongside or have a guide do all the work while you kick back and check out the scenery. Rates: $160 for half day, $225 for full day.

CROSS-COUNTRY SKI, SNOWSHOE: Stop by the Old Faithful Visitors Center, still a temporary structure while a new one is being built, or Mammoth’s Canyon Visitor Education Center, to pick up trail maps. Skis and snowshoes are available for rent (skis this past season were $11 for a half-day) along with guided tours and lessons at both lodges.

In the Old Faithful area, where many trails leave right from the Snow Lodge, I can vouch for the Lone Star Geyser Trail, an easy, groomed trail that is 9 miles round-trip from the Snow Lodge, passes the Kepler Cascades and has payoffs of sun-kissed views of the Firehole River, and then Lone Star itself, 40- to 50-foot water-and-steam displays about every three hours for a half-hour.

The Biscuit Basin Loop Trail is another easy one, a 5-miler that heads east from Morning Glory Pool and offers an excellent chance of running into wildlife, almost literally, so stay alert.

SNOWCOACH TOURS: Snowcoaches are slower than snowmobiles, but you get to sit back and let someone else do all the work, and the guides can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the park — many of them have been working winter in Yellowstone for years, and they love to share their passion for the place. Half- and full-day excursions are available

Xanterra Parks & Resorts offers snowcoach tours from both lodges to the major basins, as well as Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and other areas. Call 866-439-7375 or visit travelyellowstone .com. for rates and schedules.

Yellowstone Snowcoach Tours out of West Yellowstone, Mont., also does snowcoach tours with park-authorized guides. Call 800-221-1151.

SNOWMOBILING: Because of the new regulations — in 2008-09, 540 snowmobiles will be allowed in the park per day, and all must run with a commercial guide and meet Best Available Technology (BAT) requirements — Yellowstone is cleaner and quieter. BAT does work: I ate breakfast in the Snow Lodge as 15 snowmobiles warmed up outside, and I couldn’t hear them at all.

However, I did when I came out onto the main road from a cross-country ski excursion, although they were no louder than a car would have been. Snowmobiles aren’t allowed off the groomed roads, and I never ran into them in the backcountry. It does feel as though everyone is trying to get along. In the park, Xanterra Parks & Resorts rents snowmobiles at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and Old Faithful Snow Lodge; costs for a custom group tour start at $185 per rider per day ($200 for doubles) plus the guide ($240) for up to 10, helmet and insurance included. Or join a guided group starting at $230 for one rider ($250 for two), including helmet, clothing and insurance.

Yellowstone Snowmobiles (800-221-1151, yellowstonesnowmobiles.com.) has a large selection of snowmobiles; cost starts at $109 per day per person plus $40 per snowmobile for the guide.

Outside of park boundaries, there are more options. For a list of the snowmobile rental companies in West Yellowstone, visit westyellowstonechamber.com. or call 406-646-7701.

Kyle Wagner worked at The Denver Post from 2002-2014. She joined as the restaurant critic and food writer after nine years as restaurant critic for Westword. Her passions for mountain biking, hiking, snowboarding, skiing, river rafting, exploring the world — and anything that gets her out of the office — made transitioning into travel and fitness a perfect fit.